engleski

Lexical diversity, syntactic complexity and coherence in personal narratives of school-age children

Personal narratives, defined as monologues about a personal event, are important for social and language development as they help children understand and process positive and negative experiences. The aim of this study was to determine whether schoolchildren’s personal narratives differ according to their age and the emotional valence of the experience evoked. For this purpose, personal narratives of 60 typically developing Croatian-speaking children aged 7 to 13 years, divided into three groups (mean age 7 ; 7, 10 ; 0 and 12 ; 3), were elicited with emotional prompts using the Global TALES protocol. Children's personal narratives were analysed for lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, as well as for coherence using the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme on three dimensions: context, chronology, and theme. First, a MANOVA was conducted to determine how children differed on the combination of narrative measures. Then, a 3x3 mixed ANOVA design was conducted in which three different emotional prompt conditions (positive, negative, neutral) were manipulated within three age groups of children. The results showed that age group could explain 18% of the variance in the ability to form personal narratives. Both lexical diversity and coherence were influenced by the emotional valence of the narrative, while syntactic complexity was influenced only by age.

personal narratives ; Global TALES protocol ; emotional valence ; coherence ; language measures

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